


Trust Me

by seachild930



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:37:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seachild930/pseuds/seachild930
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Reichenbach.  Sherlock returns, hoping that doing so will automatically patch up his relationship with John and return everything to normal, but begins to worry that he's damaged his doctor beyond repair and there's nothing he can do to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust Me

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic, non-betaed, so please don't judge me too harshly D:  
> Trigger warning for mentions of depression and suicide, but nothing too graphic.

The first time, the hoarse screaming starts around two. It takes Sherlock a while to notice; he’s wrapped around himself on the couch, scrolling through documents on John’s computer and cross-referencing them with various data sheets spread across the coffee table and spilling over onto the floor. After a while, the screaming breaks through the images and numbers whirring through his brain and he tilts his head, listening. Before he knows it he’s leaping over the sofa and taking the stairs three at a time to John’s room, where he pounds the flat of his hand against the door until the screams stop. The silence is hardly reassuring; he waits until he hears John swing his feet out of bed and knock his shaking hand against the water glass on the desk before walking back downstairs to resume his perch on the couch. It takes him a while to ease back into the interrupted network of data sprawling around the living room; he sits with his head in his hands, fingers steepled around his nose, rubs his hand once through his cropped hair before resuming his work.

This becomes their nightly pattern. Sherlock, when on a case, stays up all night thinking, punctuated with breaks waking John from nightmares; when not on a case, he stays awake anyway, waiting for the telltale screaming to begin. He’s partially motivated by guilt—this hadn’t happened before he left, at least according to his not inconsiderable knowledge of John. He imagines the nights John had in the interim, comparing them to his own, also largely sleepless, nights, playing cat and mouse with Moran across Europe, and prods at the place in his chest filled with something tight and tender, the part he ignored out of necessity during those long months. He’s also motivated by science, of course, the drive to add to his store of knowledge of John’s habits, John’s fears, John’s emotions. And partially, though he hates to admit this to himself and therefore doesn’t, by fear, the part of him that thinks he’s pushed John past a breaking point and now there will be no salvation for either of them. 

These nighttime horrors are almost the only contact John and Sherlock maintain anymore. Sherlock hides in his room each morning while John gets ready for work and then leaves. John doesn’t work at St. Bart’s anymore; he takes a taxi to a clinic on the opposite side of town, where he mostly prescribes cold medicine to small children with runny noses. 

This is where John had been about to leave for when Sherlock appeared one morning as a small, huddled form on the doorstep, covered in a startling tapestry of bruises and half-healed knife wounds, skinny and shivery as a junkie, hair hacked short and dyed blonde. Sherlock hardly remembers those first few weeks, shuddering with fever in John’s bed; he remembers John sitting in the chair next to him, brushing his fingers across his sweaty face and through his hair, the fevered apologies and explanations and declarations gushing from between his chattering teeth that he is ashamed to remember now, as they did nothing to heal the hurt and depression that John so obviously carried now, in his limp and stooped shoulders and baggy eyes. John sat silently through them, dosing him with tea and medicine, monitoring the symptoms of his withdrawal and checking his new stitches for signs of infection. The corporeal John began to disappear from Sherlock’s side at about the same time as the hallucinogenic John of Sherlock’s fever dreams, when Sherlock was able to start seeing John as he was, not surrounded by a shimmery golden halo with his face bright and distorted in beautiful, terrifying shapes, glistening with tears. 

Sherlock assumed Mycroft had filled John in on why Sherlock had disappeared and why he now had risen from the dead but John didn’t seem to care, or, perhaps, the reasons for Sherlock’s faked suicide hadn’t done anything to mend the hole inside of him that woke him screaming every night. And so Sherlock respected his friend by veiling his presence, stepping in only to save John in the smallest way he could—from the nightmares that he could only assume he was the cause of, promising himself he’d disappear again as soon as he could be sure that John was going to be okay, and alive, and safe, and as disconnected from the emotional torture Sherlock had wracked him with as possible. 

The unacknowledged reason Sherlock didn’t leave was that he was afraid to go back to a life without John—a life steeped in drugs and fear where he could hardly tell what was real and what wasn’t apart from his drive to find Moran, to save his friends, even if it meant losing his soul in the process. Not that he’d really felt he’d had one to begin with; his soul, if he had one, was couched in John, outside his own body and therefore safe. 

Not as safe as he’d thought, apparently, now as dead and lifeless as the body John carried around as if it pained him, the rigid shuffle past Sherlock’s room and out the door on the way to work, the ritual he performed every morning like a sacrifice made without purpose, drive, or life.

Suddenly, somehow, it’s too much. John’s continued torture, Sherlock’s existence with him without seeing him, without alleviating any of the pain he caused, that he knows he is responsible for. He shouldn’t care—his pride tells him he was saving John’s life in the only way he knew how, wants to shove John’s head against a wall and make him understand his reasons and accept his sacrifice. I saved your fucking life, he wants to yell, and for what? To never see you, to know you hate me for what I did? But he can’t stand to see the hurt in John’s blue eyes deepen and sink, and he understands that somehow seeing Sherlock dead from suicide, his head cracked and bleeding, skull crushed in, wounded him in a way that resurrecting him from the dead somehow couldn’t heal. And something in him, pride notwithstanding, won’t let him deepen that hurt.

So he decides to take the only course of action that seems possible: he resolves to leave, in spite of the fact that doing so, he knows, will kill him, one way or another. First, though, he will cure John of his nightmares, the darkness that he caused, enable him to sleep through the night and regain some of the stability and strength that carried him around in the first year of their friendship. It’s the least he can do for the tangled wreck of a friend he came home to find.

That night he packs up the newest case materials spread around the living room after John goes to bed and, around two, sets a kettle on to boil. When the screams start, he heads upstairs as usual and pounds on the door until they stop. He hears John’s shaking breaths, hears him sit up and disentangle himself from sweaty sheets. Then he knocks on the door and pushes it open.

John sits on the edge of the bed, covered in sweat and shaking. He looks up at Sherlock with wide eyes still heavy with terror and confusion. Ignoring the pity and fear and guilt crowding his own chest, unable to make eye contact with John, Sherlock says, “I’ve made you a cup of tea. When you feel up to it, come down and drink it.” He turns on his heel and shuts the door slowly, carefully. He listens outside the door as John, after a few confused moments, staggers to his feet and limps around the room in search of his robe and slippers. This is a good sign, at least; Sherlock lets out the breath he’s been holding and sprints back down the stairs in time to hear the kettle whistle. He steeps some chamomile and adds just the right amount of milk and honey and brings it out to John, who is curled on the edge of the couch. He takes the tea and sips it quietly while Sherlock sits on the opposite end of the couch, pretending to look over the one file he left out while really watching John out of the corner of his eye.

John finishes his tea. He sets the empty cup on the table. He looks at Sherlock, says, “Thank you,” and turns toward the stairs. 

Sherlock stands and says, “John, wait. I’ve –I’ve got something to tell you.”

John pauses, his hand on the bannister. Sherlock finds he can’t look at his friend, so he directs his comments to the floor.

“I can’t apologize for what I did.” He stops, clears his throat, aware of John watching him, his haggard stance, him leaning against the bannister. “I did it to save you, and I didn’t know how far the network went. He had people watching you, day and night, and I couldn’t run the risk of revealing myself to you. You know as well as I what they would have done. I did what I had to do to save your life.”

He waits for John to say something, to reprimand him. John says nothing, and he doesn’t move to go upstairs, which is more than Sherlock hoped for, so he goes on.

“You didn’t have nightmares before, and I can only deduce that what I did triggered something that brought them on and that my return can’t change. I admit that I realized that something like this could have happened, but I had hoped that your military training and stoicism in crisis that I have seen manifest multiple times would have prevented it. To be honest, I expected you to have moved on to something else by now; fear spurred by illness drove me here after I killed Moran, and I realize now it was a mistake to put you through this. Therefore, I intend to vacate the apartment and thus enable you to recover in a way that my return has obviously prevented you from doing.”

He looks up from the floor and turns to face John. To his own horror, he sees that the panic in John’s eyes has only deepened. John is gripping the balcony so hard his knuckles are white. He says, “Try to leave me again, you fucking machine, and I swear to God I will tie you to a chair, break your ankles, and render you entirely incapable in every way of ever walking away from me for the rest of your fucking life.”

Sherlock feels that being slightly taken aback is a reasonable response to this statement. He blinks before responding, “John, all evidence points to the fact that my ostensible death caused you irreparable emotional and psychological harm. I had hoped that returning and—and making everything the way it was would help, but my continued presence here is only worsening it, as evidenced by your nightmares. The only logical conclusion is that my presence must be removed for you to make a full recovery.”

John is shaking his head and clenching his fists, moving away from the railing and walking towards Sherlock, who notes that though John is trembling, his limp has disappeared. “No, no, no, and no,” he says, and he stumbles into Sherlock, who holds John’s shoulders at arm’s length to keep him from falling, or perhaps to keep John from punching him; he isn’t clear on which. Instead, he focuses on assimilating this new information John has handed to him.

“Alright. So. You don’t want me to leave, yes?” he says, trying to distract himself from the expression on John’s face. John snorts. “Well,” says Sherlock, by this point utterly perplexed, and hurt, and confused by the pain he can’t seem to stop dishing out to his friend, “what do you want, then?”

John looks him right in the eyes. “Are you ready to hear it?”

“Yes. Of course. Whatever will rectify the damage I did—”

“Shut up!” John is yelling, suddenly, his face red and right next to Sherlock’s. “Stop being so fucking objective about everything! We are talking about this and I am going to make you understand!”

“Alright, alright!” Sherlock is backing away from John’s towering, tear-filled fury. “I’m listening!” 

“I knew you weren’t dead, you bastard,” John says, and Sherlock gapes at him, surprised, for once. “The fact that you got me out of the way first, made up that bullshit about Mrs. Hudson, the biker so I couldn’t see you—it was all calculated. It took me a while, and Mycroft kept trying to put me off it, but I did guess what you did, I just didn’t know why.”

He laughs, suddenly, dryly, and it can only be because of the expression on Sherlock’s face. “Yes, I know, the rest of us are idiots, but obviously I’m not as stupid as you always thought I was.”

“John, I never meant—”

And John, suddenly weary again, rubs his hand across his face, says, “I know, I know what you mean. It’s fine. It is. And I know Moriarty, and I know you, and I figured you were tracing his people. What I didn’t understand is why you couldn’t trust me, just this once, to have your back.”

“Well, obviously that’s all cleared up now, you know why I did it, and—”

John snorts again, and it twists his face, makes him shadowed and sad and cruel. “Yes, you were protecting my life, as if there were anything worth protecting without you, you bastard, as if I weren’t ex-military and more capable than you ever were of protecting me or yourself or anyone else you cared to protect.”

Sherlock is backtracking, trying to explain, “John, I never—I know you’re ex-military, obviously, I know you can protect yourself, but nothing could have saved you from these people except my death—they were everywhere, all the time, and I couldn’t protect you—”

“THAT’S NOT YOUR FUCKING JOB!” John shouts. “We were supposed to protect EACH OTHER, and you show up on my door-step half-dead and now you plan to take away the ONLY THING that’s made my life worth ANYTHING for the SECOND FUCKING TIME” and he’s suddenly broken again, and he’s crying and he’s saying, “You saw what I was like before I met you—you knew that I had no reason, no purpose, nothing to live for. How dare you give me that and take it all away without asking me, my permission, like you didn’t care, taking away my whole life after showing me what I could have and taking it away,” and now Sherlock is standing, and somehow he’s wrapping his arms around John, and he says, “I know what I’ve done, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and he’s feeling hysterical himself, which is new, and he doesn’t know what to do with this vulnerable friend that he can’t fix and can’t fix and can’t fix. 

They stumble back onto the couch and John curls himself around Sherlock who holds on to him like he’ll never let him go. He smooths John’s hair like John did his when he was ill and says, against John’s shoulder, “John, you were the most important thing in the world to me, and I—I thought I was saving you from this, I thought you didn’t care,” and John is laughing through his tears and saying, “The only fucking thing you couldn’t deduce,” and then they’re kissing, and John’s lips are sweet with honey and milk and salty with tears, and Sherlock’s never felt anything so urgent in his whole life, and the tight and tender spot inside his chest cracks and floods with the most vulnerable, cautious thing he’s ever felt, and it’s purple and lilac like spring and striped like John’s shirts and gold like John’s hair and the sweet pale blue of John’s eyes and their kisses are fast and urgent then long and taught and deep as cello strings and they’re lying on the couch and panting and he’s never felt anything like this before and he feels like he’ll burst with the golden honey-spun lightness and weight of it.

John says, “We have to talk about this,” and Sherlock murmurs, “Mmm,” and kisses John’s cheek and says, “I think I love you,” and “I think you are my heart,” and John says, “You are my soul” and John says “if you even think about leaving me I will go Misery on you so fast and so hard that you won’t even have time to” and Sherlock says, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” and their kisses sink into sighs and breaths and he says, “I trust you,” which is better than I love you, somehow, and John says, “I know,” and their lips glide against each other on the couch, absorb the sweat and tears and blood from a thousand lonely nights.

Sherlock meets John’s eyes, still crinkled and red with tears, and voices his deepest fear, “I worry that I’ve broken you and now you can’t be fixed, and I’m worried that somehow or another I’ll end up doing it again.” John watches him, admits, “I’m worried that you will too, and I’m worried that I’ll hurt you like you’ll hurt me. But right now, you’re here, and you promise me every day that you don’t leave. Okay? Don’t leave, and we can try to fix ourselves. We’ll work on it.” Sherlock agrees, and John says, “This means we’re talking now. No more avoidance,” and Sherlock nods, says, “As long as the kissing doesn’t stop.” John chuckles up and reaches up to run his hand through Sherlock’s spiky blonde hair, the roots just starting to show through black, curling again at the tips. 

Eventually they fall asleep against each other on the brown couch and John doesn’t shout out once and doesn’t even twitch with a nightmare and they nestle closer to each other during the night and the golden sun sees them through the curtains on his rising and wakes them to the most glorious, rose-colored morning they’ve ever met.


End file.
